…>> I find that one of the best ways to learn to animate…dialogue is to just start with…the phonemes and understand how they're animated.…And once you understand the basics of animating individual…phonemes, you can string them together to create dialogue.…So, with that in mind, let's go ahead and start looking at some phonemes.…I'm going to animate some simple vowels.…We're going to animate A, E and I.…So, let's just take a look at how to do that.…So, I've got this character and…I've got a waveform up, which is the dialogue.…So, let's go ahead and play this.…

>> A. >> So that is the phoneme A.…And you can see from the waveform that it starts off loud,…and ends a little bit more softly and this is typical for vowels.…And so you want to open the mouth wide and then close it down as well.…So, typically, the volume or the…height of the waveform will tell you how much the mouth is open.…So let's see where this starts.…I'm going to go ahead and scrub. >> A.…>> Somewhere between five and six, at start.…So I need to set a neutral key for my face in order to…

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12/20/2013

The fundamentals of great character animation are rooted in posing your model in a way that reads true, animating from pose to pose to mimic natural movement, and simulating convincing dialogue. Start here to learn the skills all beginning animators need to know to bring their characters to life, regardless of software or style. Author and animator George Maestri first teaches you how to position your model and create realistic poses that tell stories and consider balance and weight. Next, you'll take those poses and animate between them in what's called pose-to-pose animation. Then you'll get your character moving in a basic walk cycle, add expression to the face, and incorporate dialogue. Finally, you'll learn how to tie all the fundamentals together in a scene complete with pose-to-pose animation and dialogue.